Design
'General Design' 'The World' The cordinate system for the world relies on north, south, east, west, up, and down for navigation. Currently there is no consistency between the layout of the world and a physical 3 dimensional world. The world is simply defined as a collection of areas that themselves are a collection of rooms. In the places where there is no connection to another room there is no notion of another inacessible room. Areas Areas are collections of rooms, objects, creatures, shops, and their corresponding intial values and their subsequent values. Presently, areas are stored in flat files following the rom 2.4 format scheme. Rooms Rooms are a collection of information about an arbitrary location in the world. This information consists of name, description, exits, and the collection of objects and creatures that occupy the room. Geography *Terrain taxonomy/terrain type *Weather *Time Commands Intial commands will utilize the existing function pointer based approach whereby function pointers are mapped to keywords. These keywords, when matched against user supplied input causes the invocation of the function. Ideally, a script interpreter will take the place of the function pointers. Instead we will invoke an interpreter session on a script that is keymapped to the command. This should allow for a more robust approach to runtime changes and reduce the overhead of the compile, deploy, test process. Combat Combat should be round based without any downtime between rounds. Once combat is initiated it should continue until one side has been pronounced victorious. Victory can be obtain by disabling or killing your opponent permanently or by causing your opponent to flee. Combat should be as automated as possible with regard to weapon strikes and defensive maneuvers. Specific skills and actions should be permitted during combat to enhance the sense of control and interaction during combat. Damage should be shown in either a numeric value or a relative value to the receivers overall health. Death should occur when a victims health is reduced to 0. Player verse player combat will be support in various locations: *Adminstration/staff ran battle arenas with well regulated rules and timelimits *Open combat areas where there are no limits on combat between players *All other pvp combat should be voluntary and both fighters should be within a reasonable range of each other NPC combat should focus on providing ambiance and interaction with the world in an interesting way. NPC's should obey most of the same rules that player combat obeys. NPC's may have abilities beyond what a typical player would have, but they should be balanced with respect to their level and value to the overall game world. NPC's should attempt to flee when they are outmatched, hiding or gaining help where appropriate. NPC's should also have some notion of weaknesses towards their oponent, and remember those who have attacked them previously unsuccessfully. Various NPC's should be safe from combat if their death would cause undue burdens upon other players or provide a distinct advantage to the player killing it. Spells should take time to cast. They should be interruptable by various activities including moving and receiving damage. Spells should be capable of being resisted, repelled, or reflected and will consumed mana. If a player or npc does not have enough mana to support the spell they are casting, it should immediately fail without utilizing any of the magical components needed for the spell. Spells should be balanced based on their intended level. All spell damage and affects should be modified by level in some regards so that they could be utilized at any stage in the game. A system for calculating the relative strength of a spell or skill should be devised for comparing multiple spells against each other and lay the groundwork for knowing if a new spell or skill will be balanced with the existing spells/skills. Combat should continue in the event that a player in combat has lost connection. The system should attempt to fight in a way that is atleast as intelligent as an npc, and try to leave combat if it is feasible. Groups of players should all equally share in the spoils of victory and any npc being attacked by a group should have a way to target the player who is the biggest "threat" first. Races / classes / factions There should be a distinction between races that are playable by users and those that are not. Any user selectable race added to the system should have a well thought out purpose and be balanced against other user selectable races. Various distinction between races should be defined by resistences, vulnerabilities, immunities, stats, abilities, materials, and looks. A system for calculating the relative strength of a race should be devised so as to allow for a quick comparison between two distinct races. Classes should further refine a players set of skills, abilities, stats, and looks. Classes should favor specific tactics over others and should provide a sense of depth and complexity to the game. Each class should have weaknesses as well as strengths. For example, the mage will have large damaging spells but a small amount of health which could be exploited by a warrior or rogue. Each class should have an equal number of other classes that it is good against, and weak against. Also considerations should be taken on the levels at which something is better or worse. If a mage is good after level 30 but terrible before then, then there should be other classes to fill these gaps. This will provide players a way to selected a difficulty mode to the game. However, the knowledge of the difficulty should be made clear during the selection of such a class as to not alienate new players who ended up selecting a class that is more difficult than their skill level. Factions should focus on alignment, clan, and religious conviction levels. These would add complexity to the environment and allow for greater flexibility in a players choice of styles. Ideally, each of these factions will provide unique content that is not available to those of the other factions, special regard to balancing them should be taken into consideration when adding faction based content. Attributes The attributes list below are currently implemented but their affects are not entirely clear. A current listing of what each attribute does should be included at a later point. Potential future attributes/stats include: *Strength - number of items and weight that can be carried, and physical damage **+2 items carried per level **+20 lbs carried per level **+0-1 damage for melee combat per level *Dexterity - movement gained per level **+0-2 movement gained per level **+0-1% chance on avoidance maneuvers (including trap avoidance) *Wisdom - number of practice sessions gained per level **+0-1/5 practice sessions per level *Intelligence - mana gained per level and how much is learned from a practice session **+0-2 mana per level **+0-1/5% learned from practices *Constitution - health gained per level **+0-2 hp per level *Charisma - number of trains gained per level, reduces aggressive monsters from attacking **+0-1/25 trains per level **+0-1% chance to reduce aggression Movement/Transport The current movement system allows for players to walk 1 room away per movement command. They can move either north, east, south, west, up, or down. Additional methods of transportation include a complete transportation group that includes the ability for the castor to gate or jump to a target based on their name. It is also possible for players to enter pre-exiting portals to other rooms, or to create portals to new locations. Creating a portal to a bad target should result in an unstable portal that kills anything that enters it. There should be a way to determine if a portal is stable or not easily. Additionally, there are teleportation rooms that automatically teleport a player to a given destination, these provide for additional story elements and a depth that can be built into the area. Non magical movement deducts movement points from the player based on the terrain type they are traversing. Points should be removed when they enter a room, it should not be possible for a player to enter a room where they do not have enough movement to satisfy the request. Mounts/horses should be purchasable based on the players level and when ridden allows for the movement of the mount to be used instead of the users. Additionally, coaches could be hired which are objects that follow a set path to a location. Their cost is dependant upon the distance that the player rides and should be deducted for each leg of the voyage. If an overland map is used, utilizing oceans, then ferries should be included in the process of moving between land masses, these should cost money and be paid upfront by the person riding it. If they quit while on the ferry the next time they log in, they should be located at their designated recall point. All players have a set recall that could be modified based on their faction at a later point. Death Characters who have died will immediately be transported back to the altar of their deity. They will have their corpse presented before them and need to loot their corpse for their previous goods. Those who die should incur a 20% experience loss but never below 0. They should not be healed, but should have all temporary affects removed from their character, including bleeding, drunkeness, hunger, thirst, etc. Groups Grouping, similar to chat, should be a pivotal goal for the game. Increased cooperation and assistance will help promote a healthy community and lend itself to complex situations that were not invisioned by any developers. Players should be allowed to form groups at any point but the group should be restricted in size based on the level of the players. Currently the grouping limits are a 20 level difference between the highest and lowest group members, this may need to be readdressed as the pbase grows. To form a group, individuals follow one player and the followed player will accept them into their group. An improvement to this would be to allow for players to petition a player/leader and the leader joins them (without the need to have them follow). Any player should be able to disallow people from following them, and should be able to remove a single group member. Groups should also have a seperate method of communication outside of the mainline communcation channels. Coins aquired while grouping should be evenly split amongst all players, and items given to the person who inflicts the fatal blow. Xp gained should be the same or just slightly less than solo killing the npc on their own. Xp should only be given to a group member when they are in the same room as where the creature is killed. All members should get credit for quests for killing a quest creature. Only one quest item per kill will be permitted, and the player who inflicts the fatal blow receives it. A group member who dies during combat will receive no benefit of the battle even if the rest of the group kills the creature. Guilds/Clans Clans can be formed by any player who has reached level 60 or rebirthed. In order to form a clan they must petition for creation of a new clan which then requires a moderators approval of the initial idea. Alternatively, a vote system could be instated which allows any player to vote for or against a petitioned clans acceptance to aleviate the moderator burden. Creation should cost a significant amount of gold and/or questpoints. Once formed, the initial petitioning player gains access to all unlocked clan command (to begin with this is just a join and unjoin, and clan donate). They will be solely responsible for recruiting new members by using their join command. Any player who is offered membership has the ability to accept the invitation or to reject the invitation. Any clan member of a higher rank than another clan member can unjoin a lower ranking member. A clan can only ever change leadership by the initial leader giving over abilities to another member or through a process of mutiny in which a majority of the clan can mutiny the leader to be removed. After which point the clan should have the ability to vote in a new leader (this voting process has not yet been implemented). Limitations on membership should start at 5 member max and through a process of upgrades be expandable. There are no other limitations on membership requirements other than those imposed by the clans themselves. A leader can disband a clan by unjoining all members of their clan and then unjoining themselves. Once a clan has been disbanded it must follow the same rules of a new clan creation to be brought back. Clans should have the ability to construct clan fortresses/areas/etc. at a cost that is deducted from a shared clan account. Potential extensions include a clan combat system where clans can manage resources and buildings and fight against other clans. Also a system for claiming territory and defending territory could be a further enhancement. Economy The current economy of the world is based around silver, gold, quest points, and eventually faith. The conversion rate between silver and gold is 100:1. There is no present conversion rates on the latter. Currently all npc's in the game have a set calculation for determining how much money on hand they are spawned with. This is to prevent inflation and to balance out potential oversights by level designers. Additional features could be added to allow for relative wealth of npc's for more roleplaying/realism however there is no current mechanism for overriding the games balancing algorithms. Additionally, the value of items are specified by the weight of the item, it's material, and the level of the item. Thus an item made of diamond will be more valuable than a similar item made of wood. Gold should be adequately challenging to acquire to maintain the sense of accomplishment of the players when they achieve gold. 100 gold per level of the player should be a general rule of thumb, thus by level 60 a player should be able to have aquired roughly 6k gold in their gameplay. A player will have many ways to gain wealth, including: killing creatures, selling items, questing, finding it throughout the world Silver and gold will both have a weight where 1 gold = 1/10 the weight of 1 silve, this provides an incentive to convert lower denomination currency into the larger denomination. Various items for a player to spend money on include: food, equipment, drinks, pets, mounts, craft skills, coaches, access to restricted areas, clan improvements, and healing Quest points should be spendable upon special equipment, magical affects on equipment, access to restricted areas, adding to zones, long term spell affects, clan improvements, and special mounts/pets Faith should only be obtainable through a microtransaction system and should equate to 1 faith per $.10, all items purchaseable via faith should also be obtainable by other means within the game or have little impact on the balance within the game. Gold and silver should be transferrable between players buth not quest points or faith. An automated auction system is available for players to place items for others to bid upon. The transaction for the auctioned items will occure automatically without any intervention by the bidders or seller after an auction concludes. Bidding should only be in gold and there should be a sliding scale for the minimum bid amount based on the present bid price. Players are allowed to run their own shops, or sell items directly to existing shops who specialize in the goods they are selling. Shops should have hours of operation specified in their areas, and the level of markup currently relies upon the level designers judgement. Items sold to a shop should persist until they are bought by another player, if a shopkeeper already has an item of the type being sold, the next item of the same type should be sellable at a lower price. The shopkeepers should alter their valuation of items based on an items condition. Shopkeepers should run out of player sold items but never out of their initial starting inventory. Quests Currently all quests are automated but only consist of 3 different origins. *Merlin the quest master - Gives questpoints for findng quest gems and hunting down known murderers *Captain of the cityguard - Gives rewards for retrieving stolen items and returning them to their rightful owners *Land of the Flaming Sword - Endurance game available where increasingly difficult creatures try to hunt the participant down A core set of per level quests should be designed, ideally a scripted approach would be favored (especially if it can allow for user generated content) Quest points should be provided as an award for quests of suitable difficulty. Specially designed and ran quests by administrative staff and moderators should be feasible with an agreed upon payout. These could ideally be timed to coincide with real world holidays and match a similar theme. Each quest should either be repeatedable continually like the existing quests, repeatable per rebirth, or a one time quest. Additional refinements on the quest criteria should be established. Training/Practicing All skills and spells will need to be "acquired" through a process similar to training. Currently spell groups/spell domains/skills must be added at creation time or utilize "training sessions" that are gained when a player levels to purchase new skills and spells. The exception to this, is that rangers may study tomes that store spells on them, in order to attempt to learn the spell on the tome. All training must be done by specially designated trainer npc's, and the world should have ample trainers so that players know where they should be going in order to increase their skills. Training is different than practicing in that training is used for permanently increasings abilities or gaining a new skill/spell. Practices are sessions also gained by leveling, but increases a players proficiency at a given skill or spell. A player may learn everything within their class assuming they have gained enough training sessions to do so. All skills/spells can be practiced to 50% proficiency, beyond that it must be utilitized in order for the skill/spell to improve. Abilities can only be trained to the maximum value that is specified for the players given class/race combination. Skills Can players learn things (eg. metalwork)? Where do they learn? What materials are required? What cost? What can they make? What use are the made products (eg. swords could be sold). You may need to define, for each skill that players can learn, something like this: Skill level required to make it. Do they know how to make it? (eg. have the recipe) What reagents are required? That is, the things that are consumed in the process (eg. leather to make shoes) What tools are required? That is, things that are needed but are not consumed (eg. a leather-worker’s needle). Do they need to be at a certain place? Eg. a forge for metalwork, a fire for cooking. Objects Most MUDs have objects – that is, things that can be picked up, carried around and used. What are you planning to have? What will they do? Where do players get them? What use are they? Can they be bought or sold? Can they be made? Does equipment wear out? To what rules? How is it repaired? At what cost? Where? Can objects be discarded (left lying on the ground), or destroyed? How many objects can a player carry at one time? Can they purchase or obtain extra capacity? Is capacity based on weight, number, volume? What attributes do objects have? An object might have: Armour class (wearing it increases armour) Attack rating (wielding it gives X amount of attack, eg. a sword) Attribute modification (eg. wearing it increases wisdom) A use – eg. using a key unlocks a door, eating food increases health Value – how much you can sell it for Wear and tear – how much damage it has suffered Minimum level number to use it Restrictions on use – eg. only mages might use wands Can a player carry more than one of it? If so, is there a limit? Is it a quest item? If so, for which quest(s)? Does it disappear if the player disconnects? Can it be sold? Traded? Messaging Currently the system utilizes an internal mail system for persistent messages between users. The messages are stored server side using a flat file format in a single file which is an aggregate of all existing messages. Limitations on messages are set based on the number of characters contained within a message (including whitespace). Player should be able to message other players directly, admin/staff, entire clans, or everyone in the game (limitations should be considered to reduce spam). Users should have the ability to reply to messages, delete messages, mark messages as an abuse, flag messages, define a messaging bucket they belong to, and compose/read messages at their leisure. Message buckets should be predefined with the potential to enable user specified buckets/folders for sorting their messages into. Potential revenue sources could exist in the possibility of including object and currency transactions via the message system. Users should not have to be present or online to have a message sent to them as the goal is to provide a mechanism for longer term messaging between play sessions. Messages should be available to the recipient immediately, but remain in an unread state until the recipient choose to read the message. Potential improvements afford the sender the ability to see who and when someone has read a message they sent. Users should have the capability to ignore or block incoming messages from specific senders. Bank The existing bank, locker, and strongbox mechanisms will be maintained going forward. The clan system will need to be rebalanced in order to decrease the generated income. There will be no cost to using the bank but lockers will have a cost associated with how many items are being stored. Potentially, one bank could be the players preferred bank and any additional banks would have a fee associated with their use (this is not currently implemented). Logging All new moderators/administrators/personel should be logged continually until it is agreed upon by the existing staff that they are suitably trustworthy. Various interactions that strongly affect the game, it's servers, or the characters should also be logged at all times. Logs should contain a data time, username, account information, and detailed information about the action being logged. Players accused of cheating or hacking should also be logged until the actions can be confirmed or denied. All errors of the game should be logged, and anything being loaded or saved to disk should be logged. Accounts should have the ability for moderators and others to add comments to for the sake of recording potential infractions and general feelings about people through interactions with them. Levels Mortal levels should range between 1-60. Once a player reaches level 60 they should be able to rebirth their character, retaining their knowledge of the previous life, and play through again. Eventually, players should be able to achieve a demi-god status that allows them expanded abilities and a place to fit into the mythos of the world. This could potentially be levels 60-90. With the last set of levels 91-100 being reserved for game administration/personnel. Higher levels should unlock additional features of the game, and grant abilities/skills/items not available at lower levels. Additional lifetimes should allow for a refinement of the characters choices without allowing them to easily "max" everything. Potential changes for this may demand adding non-linear components for experience gained, or costs for training, etc. Making money The goal should first and foremost be to make something we are all proud to put our name on. Emphasis on fun, enjoyment, achievment, exploration, community, and friendships should be above any financial incentives to be had. That said, there are numerous costs associated with running the game and it is a goal to recouperate those costs. Any financial gains beyond the recouperation is helpful but should not be a primary concern over the previously mentioned goals. All income should try and utilize microtransactions and donations. Any items or benefits provided should not shift the balance of the game in the favor of the single person receiving said benefits. These financial elements should be obtainable via other means or not alter the gameplay. Potential items to be sold include: *character portraits *rooms *skill improvements *character slots *clan improvements *global or area effects The microtransaction system should provide a method for collecting income and unless otherwise noted, any income accounts are the property of the game owner. Ownership The game and all related game code and content will remain the property of a single owner (presently Howard Ramsdell). All additions to the game, source code or other various resources activities will be at will on the part of the contents creator (no partial ownership should or is implied). Player generated content will become part of the game once it has been submitted for approval, and the ownership of such content will remain with the game's owner. If there become a finacial component to the game, it will be favorable to find a equitable means to divide the finances based on contributions provided. A tool for tracking contributions by people at all levels should be included so that if there needs to be a partial ownership structure at a later date, it will be feasible to allocate accordingly. The code and all components of it should remain as a single entity and at no time should it be taken partially or wholly without the consent of the game's owner. At no point should it be used outside of the servers provided specifically for the game. If one member of the team leaves and has portions of the game outside of the server, they are required to destroy any copies they have and return any resources that were provided to them for utilization during the creation of the game. Running the game *Servers *Administration *Moderators *Player Requests *Reporting **Typos **Bugs **Cheating Problem Players The game should be geared towards players of age 13+ in most cases. This means player names, language, in game items, images, or anything player chosen should be age appropriate. First and formost there should be an emphasis on having the community at large deal with problematic characters, however, if the action being done is outside the range of what normal gameplay allows for dealing with, moderators or admins should step in. When dealing with problematic characters you should always ask yourself what the impact on the overall community is at large. If what was done is having little to no impact other than being annoying or increasing someone's work, then it makes sense to try and ask the player to kindly stop the action that is causing problems. The first step to resolving a problem is to address it candidly, often times a player doesn't realize the impact of their actions on others and a reminder is all that is needed. If however, the impact to the game is large as in cheating, hacking, or reducing the overall flow of the game it may be necessary to escalate the response to include ignoring, revoking of privileges, temporarily revoking a characters ability to play, or outright banning an entire account. A mechanism for allowing players who have been disciplined to voice grievances outside of the game world should be developed so that they have the ability to explain a situation further and potentially reverse a decision by a subordinate admin or moderator if there was truly a misunderstanding. The key is to understand what's best for the greater community at large. Balancing not over stepping a punishment with the enjoyment of others is critical. Accounts Currently there is only the notion of a character and not an account. However, an account approach would be favored as it would provide a way to limit the number of characters a player could have and thus provide a possible source for revenue. Also it provides a layer to prevent multiplaying and cheating. The account should store information such as the name, email, and real age of the player. As well as a history list of ips that player has connected from. The account name could be the users email address, and an initial password could be emailed to that address to validate authenticity. In the event of a breach of conduct, the account should be suspended either temporarily or indefinately depending on the degree of the infraction. New Players The focus on keeping new players should be of utmost importance. Ideally, there will be a tutorial stage which prevents a new player from getting off track. From level 1 - 5 there should be a consistent process where the player only progresses after having demonstrated an understand of the previous concepts needed. These concepts should be limited in complexity and try to get the player engaged with the playing of the game as quickly as possible. There should be very little risk of death for a new player, but instead show progress and provide feedback that increases a players sense of interest to progress. Tools to aid new players and entice them to stay or bring others should also be a focus. Chatting Currently there are a series of channels that are available to all players in the game. These channels allow for different ways to articulate a message. Messages should be filtered and censored for inappropriate language. As the playerbase increases, it may be necessary to segment the channels based on level. Also, introduction of chat moderators may become needed. However, chat should be an integral part of the game as it allowed for players to expand upon the game in their own unique ways. Players should be capable of seeing the name of a speaker at all times unless the other player is not "visible" by means of the game. Also, players should have the ability to ignore others which they find questionable, and to enable or disable channels as needed. Artificial Intelligence Currently there is a system for having creatures in the game chat with the players in a somewhat meaningful way. The ability to allow for the modification of the way in which they interact should be open for user input similar to a wiki approach. Presently the chat is stored in a single flat file. Creatures attacked will remember the last person who attacked them, in subsequent situation where they are in the same room it will become aggressive towards that person. There should be a random chance that the creature "forgets" who they were attacked by possibly due to the creatures wisdom (forgetting is not currently implemented). Presently spell casters are defined as a specific class type (mage, cleric, etc.) and thus their types of spells are static based on the defined type. It would be prefered to allow for favored spells per npc as part of the definition of the creature. Also, heuristics could be used to determine how successful a spells use was or was not to further refine which spells should be cast and when. Currently, npc's of a lower level than those who are attacking them will attempt to flee. There is no intelligence to their fleeing as they will often times wait in the room they fled to. Possible extensions could utilize hide, invisibility, or other techniques for a "smart" npc to remain safe. Npcs will attempt to regain lost health through resting, sleeping, or standing. Pets and Mounts Currently players can only have one pet and one mount (rangers have a skill to alter this). These pets must be purchased from shops found throughout the game. There is presently no upkeep costs associated with owning a pet or mount, however this has the potential to become unbalanced (especially in regards to rangers). Various pets have skills and affects and there is no present system for calculating the relative power of a pet. All pets will remain with their owners even if the owner dies. However, a dead pet cannot be revived. Game balance Game balance should be of utmost priority with the intent that characters should not feel like they are being constantly punished for finding approaches that work better than others. Level requirements on equiment helps maintain this balance as well as tools in game for deducing an items potency and either automatically removing the item or augmenting it in such a way as to reduce it's potency. World items, rooms, and creatures should all have a simple to understand calculation based system which all users looking to extend the game should use. The calculation based system should result in a single value that represents the relative power of the said item, creature, or room. As the system is more widely accepted and understood, tools can be constructed to find items that need to be reviewed for their excessive power. In the event something is found to be unbalanced, all effort should be made to gradually degrade existing used items and to immediately prevent further propogation of the unbalanced situation. Currently, the level range for grouping is 20 levels between the lowest and highest player in the group. This may need to be redressed as the player base increases. Character Differences To provide a greater depth and variety of game style playing emphasis on differences should be great. Each character should have a distinct set of positives and negatives that can be balanced by other players positives and negatives ala. rock/paper/scissors balancing. Currently players are allowed to select various components of their character during creation. This includes their name, race, class, gender, alignment, deity, and starting weapon. In the text version players also have the ability to customize their starting set of skills and spells. Customization should be expanded to the web client to preserve this feature. Additionally, players can refine their characters through their title, description, equipment, and the set of skills/spells they acquire through playing. As emphasis shifts more towards the web client, the characters should be allowed to select a portrait of their character from a set of predefined portraits or potentially submit their own for acceptance (possibly a source of revenue). Current deficiencies in this area revolve around the stats system. Within only a few levels each race/class combination has the potential to reach their hard caps for stats. This limits a players sense of choice and provides little in the way of customization. Considerations for how to improve this should be made. Persistence Currently all data is stored locally to the game server in flat text files of a specific format. The data stored currently consists of: *Areas *Rooms (for redit extension) ** saved only by invoking the command from within the game *Players **saved every 15 minutes of gameplay **saved each time they quit the game **saved after each death **saved prior to a copyover **saved when a player submits a "save" requrest via command **saved when a staff members submits a "save" request for all players *Objects **Saved automatically if dropped or moved from their initial spawn location. *Logs *Helpfiles *Clans *Classes *Deities *Notes *And a variety of specialized data A move towards a more general fomat would be favored over the current approach. This move should enable the fast ability to query the data based on their relationships and have a way to rapidly access pieces of data publicly or privately. Ideally, all objects and creatures that are out of ther inital starting state should be preserved, however this should not cause duplication of game items or creatures. Game items should only be duplicate when consumed or retained by the players of the game. This approach is not currently in use, and instead objects out of place are saved to a single file which is loaded during startup. This causes items to be duplicated as the original location of the item will also be populated. Creatures out of place are not currently preserved. Building Current approaches towards game extension work off of flatfile modifications done by game staff known as builders. These staff rely upon either another staff member validating their changes and submitting them for deployment/testing or by having access to the central repository for areas and submitting their changes directly to be picked up for deployment. And extension to the process has been introduce by means of an in game redit (room edit) command. This allows for the saving and loading of rooms during runtime while the game is opperating without the need to cause a static reload of all the areas. The goal for building is to provide players with direct input on the process by means of a web facing interface similar to how wiki pages are modified. All areas would be stored in a central location accessible by front facing client pages, and through a webbased gui frontend players could propose changes. This process would follow a similar validation and acceptance criteria similar to the current processes using the flatfile. The ability for players to alter the existing world in a way that is not simply additive will need further security considerations taken into account. Creation of additional content should also go through a stringent balancing review before being accepted, potential new content could be a source for active revenue. All new accepted content should immediately be accessible by those in the game without need for reloading the entire system.